Loose Leaves.
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MALFRED THEODOR, proprietor and editor
• of our contemporary, Poids Lourd, the French commercial vehicle paper, decided recently to make a long _business tour in the provinces and to take his editorial and advertising offices with him. For this purpose he purchased a Latily chassis and had a special body built for it by Messrs. Paquette, of Paris. The coach has comfortable sleeping accommodation and the rear por tion is fitted up as an office. When• visiting important commercial exhibitions such as the Foire de Marseille, however, the office part is capable of functioning as an American bar, thereby undoubtedly increasing the popularity of Poids Lourdl The tour was exceedingly successful, and the coach proved so light on petrol that. M. Theodor now uses it as an ordinary touring car.
MOTOR hearses are regarded by the French fiscal authorities as "passenger-carrying ve hides" and are taxed as such!
ACCORDING to a French journal, japan is entering the commercial vehicle industry. The Ishikawajirna Shipbuilding Co., an important concern subsidized by the Japanese Government, has started to manufacture heavy vehicle chassis for goods and passenger transport in its Yokohama works.
SOLDERING by high-pressure .steam seems to us to be something of a new art—at least in the construction of parts of a motor vehicle. It is employed in the securing of the heat-radiating gills of the tubes on the remarkable Still radiator. Briefly, el8 in the construction of these tubes solder in wire form is wound on together with the locking wire of the looped gills and, after fluxing, the steam is passed through the tube until the solder flows.
REMARKABLY low tyre costs are being achieved
with the latest type of articulated eight-wheelers, Carrying huge loads, these vehicles can be run at a cost a lid. per mile for their solid tyres, so that the figure per ton-mile becomes so low as to be almost negligible.
PASSENGERS on long-distance service coaches can do much to encourage safe and considerate driving on the part of the men at the wheel. Lately we have heard of several instances in which satisfied parties asked particularly that their return journeys should be made on coaches driven by the men who took them away. This, of course, applied to cases where the passengers remained at seaside resorts, etc., for a matter of days or weeks.
FEW who see Colonel R. E. Crompton, C.B., after
a hard game of squash racquets at the Royal Automobile Club • would, if they did not know him, realize that he is a veteran of -the Crimea, when lie served as a midshipman. He was an officer of the Rifle Brigade, with the third battalion of which he served in India. It was whilst he was attached to the Post Offiee Department that he pioneered mechanical-road traction in the Far East. He was among the first to take up electrical engineering in this country. He was a friend of the late Emperor of Austria and of the Crown Prince Rudolph, and at the Emperor's request was at Meyerling within a few hours of the tragedy that made history. He was in command of the electrical engineers in the Boer War.We understand that the non. Sir Arthur Stanley has written an introduciton to the Colonel's book of reminiseenees to be published in a few weeks. CHANGES in style and make-up of pages in such a journal as The Commercial Motor occur rather more often than would be imagined or realized by the reader, however constant he may be or assiduous in the study of its contents, They are admitted only if they are likely to increase the attractiveness of the paper, to make the text matter easy to read and the illustrations clear and quickly understandable. From week to week perhaps alterations would scarcely be noticeable, but the difference is very readily discernible if the current issue be compared with one of a year or two previously. There is a change, however, in the cover of The Commercial Motor this week which is sufficiently marked to be unavoidable. The colour scheme and the design of the title have been carefully retained (because the reader who likes his paper sufficiently to ,buy it every week is averse to drastic alterations—a fact that every Editor should remember 1), but there has been a general " cleaning-up " according with the modern tendency towards straighter
lines and simplified design in place of the more ornate.
A. PART of the weekly duties of a highly trained member of the staff of The Cdimmereial Motor is to examine the patent specifications published by the Patent Office and to select for description and comment those likely to be of interestto our readers. His chief bêtes noires are the inventions of perpetual motion devices and the specifications of methods and apparatus with no shred of novelty in them. Generally, there is a few minutes' amusement to be obtained from one of the former because the man who discovers perpetual motion either is strangely vague or describes and sets out a design full of complicated detail of, Invariably, the most elementary character. Of the second class we have an example before us—a lid for a butter-pot which does not differ one iota from thousands of similar articles on the market. Our contention is that these specifications should not be accepted.